Alex Palou Takes Pole At Mid-Ohio After Practice Dust-Up With Will Power
Palou currenlty leads the championship by 93 points
Alex Palou is continuing his monster NTT IndyCar Series season by taking pole position for Sunday's Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, but it didn't happen without a little drama.
Saturday's qualifying session at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course was the second on-track session of the day for IndyCar drivers after the weekend's second practice session, which took place earlier in the morning, and that's where things got interesting.
Now, Mid-Ohio is just a little over 2.25 miles long, and a lap around it only takes a bit over a minute. This means that in practice, with as many as 27 cars on the track, it can be very hard for drivers to build an appropriate gap to do a clean flying lap.
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This was what Will Power was looking to do on Saturday morning, and felt like Alex Palou — who had just come out of the pits — didn't give him enough of a gap to not impede his attempt at a fast lap.
This led to a fiery exchange between the two in the pits after the session.
Power is known to have a bit of a short fuse, but you can understand his frustrations. This incident prevented him and the No. 12 team from getting some data that could be used in qualifying, and Power himself said before qualifying got underway that they hadn't gotten clean laps in on either the softer red tire or the harder black tire before qualifying.
That would explain why Power — who holds the record for most pole positions in IndyCar history with 71 — only managed to qualify 22nd for Saturday's race, though, it is worth noting that his Team Penske teammates Josef New Garden and Scott MacLaughlin didn't fair a whole lot better and will be starting near him in 18th and 21st.
As for Palou, he made his way into the second round of qualifying and finally, the Firestone Fast Six, in which he topped the timesheet and will start on pole ahead of McLaren's Christian Lundgaard in second and his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Kyffin Simpson in third.